1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to storage equipment, and more particularly to apparatus for temporarily storing cases until they are needed for filling with selected articles.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is known in the bottle filling industry for a filling plant to receive supplies of empty bottles pre-packed in shipping cases. That practice is quite common when filling glass bottles. By receiving the bottles pre-packed in cases, the filling plant need not invest in case erecting machinery, which would be necessary if the cases are manufactured as flat folded paperboard blanks that must be unfolded to an open configuration suitable for receiving the bottles.
A characteristic of the pre-packed cases is that the bottles must be removed from the cases for washing and filling and then repacked into the Cases. That process requires that the mother cases (the cases associated with the first quantity of bottles to enter the filling line at the beginning of a filling run) must be temporarily stored. As many mother cases must be stored as are required to hold enough bottles to initially fill the filling line with bottles. In some operations, it may be as long as 45 minutes from the time the initial bottles enter the filling line until they emerge. Consequently, all the cases corresponding to the bottles that can be processed during that time must be temporarily stored. When the initial bottles emerge from the downstream end of the filling line, the cases associated with the upstream bottles then entering the line are unloaded and immediately conveyed to receive compliments of the initially filled bottles in known manner. However, the initially stored mother cases must remained stored in the vicinity of the filling line until the filling run is completed. Only at that time are the mother cases needed to receive the last quantity of bottles that leave the filling line after the filling run.
A problem related to supplying bottles and cases together to a bottling plant concerns the accumulation of bottles between the upstream and downstream ends of the filling line. Typically the operation of repacking the bottles into the shipping cases is faster than the washing and filling operations. Consequently, it is common to accumulate bottles in the filling line, and only later send them to the case packing station. The result is that the cases associated with the accumulated bottles must also be temporarily stored until the bottles are discharged from the accumulation station. Related to the bottle accumulation practice are problems associated with faulty washing or filling operations. Equipment jams, bottle breakage, and similar malfunctions may temporarily reduce the need for a continuous flow of cases to the packing station.
Prior methods for handling the mother cases are generally unsatisfactory. One prior method is to stack off the cases from the case conveyor and store them near by. At the end of the filling run, the cases are reloaded onto the case conveyor to intercept complements of bottles at the packing station. Fork lift trucks and pallets are often used in prior stack off processes. That practice is wasteful of both manpower and storage space. Prior practices also demand additional manpower to constantly match the case supply to the actual bottle requirements, which vary because of upstream bottle accumulation and/or equipment malfunction.
Thus, a need exists for improved means for temporarily storing cases associated with bottle filling lines.